10 Hidden Wealth Rules. What are yours?
Wealth is what you don’t see, rather than what you do see.
Hey –
Wealth is flaunted everywhere online. I can hardly scroll through any channel, particularly Youtube, and get anywhere without big, bold yellow or red letters screaming “The easy way to make $1M!!” at you to click relating to some sum of money.
Luckily, I use Arc browser to blur all Youtube thumbnails otherwise I would get trapped scrolling….
Because of surface-level content, it’s easy for us to make surface-level misconceptions and assumptions about wealth and money that miss the deeper picture.
Morgan Housel has written some great pieces on this subject.
He says,
“Wealth is what you don’t spend, which makes it invisible and hard to learn about by observing other people’s lives.
Spending is contagious; wealth is mysterious.”
I’ve tried to observe what wealth means to me, rather than what wealth means to others, in attempts to experience greater levels of wealth today, rather than some distant future.
Here are some of the rules I’ve noticed:
1. Wealth isn’t any job or career.
You are not your job, you create value through the vehicle of a job. That means that you create wealth, not your job. Because you create wealth, not your job, you can create wealth through various vehicles and avenues beyond your job.
Here are some vehicles you might create wealth through:
W-2 Income
Company options/stock
Consulting/Coaching/Freelance services
Paid speaking or leading workshops
Sell digital or physical products
Growth equities
Interest-earning cash/debt
Interest-earning value equities
Invest in cash-flowing companies
Invest in startups
Staked assets
Find the vehicles that call to you and remember that wealth isn’t the vehicle you choose, but how you move your unique value through that particular vehicle.
2. The org chart is invented, can be changed, or avoided altogether.
I’ve been in planning meetings about designing an org-chart and titles. They are more flexible than they appear and titles can be augmented.
By thinking like an owner in any business, you can shift what hat you wear. Beyond that, you can avoid the org chart altogether. Becoming a linchpin and creating value beyond your role allows you to also begin to forge relationships within a business that goes beyond a title or role. In fact, titles matter less in some sense the further up the stack you move. Of course, Public company corporate structures exist, but in smaller organizations this is much more fluid.
3. Status is perishable.
I’ve been in a $10M home that had a top of the line stereo system that the owner told me was the 2022 model and that the 2025 model is supposed to be incredible. Sadly, status goods don’t hold their value. And they needed to upgrade, again.
Quality goods, on the other hand, get better with age. Your desire for these objects may remain constant or even grow over time. Buy quality goods, not perishable goods for the purpose of status-seeking.
4. Love what you do. Because the reward of great work is that you get to do more of it.
We have a strange fantasy that if we just do well enough in our work, we’ll never have to work again. The problem, though, is often the opposite is true. The better we do at our work, the more responsibility we’re given. If you love what you do, the joy of work expands as you do more of it, and you see this as a good thing.
I doubt the composer John Williams finished writing the score for Star Wars in hopes that he would never have to make another score for a film again.
5. Don’t Complain.
Complaining externalizes your own agency. It puts others in the role of bully and you as a victim. Instead of complaining, try this.
You see a situation as not what you want it to be. Ok, now, how can you make it right? Ellen Langer has a great line,
“Don’t make the right decisions, make your decisions right.”
What she means is that even a poor decision can be made better. We can’t be perfect but we can always improve.
6. Make “dumb” decisions… according to other people.
Alpha is often in areas where you look dumb by going first or going against the grain.
If it was easy, safe, and common knowledge, then it wouldn’t be valuable. What’s safe becomes risky, and what’s risky becomes safe. That’s not to say you should be stupid (see below), but instead that many good ideas look like “dumb” ideas to the general public.
7. Avoid the truly bad decisions at all costs.
These are much easier to spot. This is doing your taxes, avoiding legal problems, keeping yourself in integrity, etc. These should be a boundary line you never cross.
“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” – Charlie Munger
If you keep showing up and avoid the truly bad decisions, you can generally end up doing ok.
8. Invest in what you love
What you invest in, you are “voting for.” You have the ability to “vote” for more of what you want in the world by putting money into things that you love. If you put money into things from a place of greed, you might win short term but long term it will lead you astray.
When you invest in something you love, you win twice. You win because you love the act of doing it, and you win if the investment goes well.
9. Slow Down
Since spending is instantaneous, wealth is unhurried. We make stupid decisions when we’re hurried, and being hurried is feeling like we’re in scarcity and lack resources.
Wealth is having more than enough time, more than enough money, more than enough ability, and capacity.
10. Wealth is having more than enough.
This is the most important paradox of wealth to understand. The way to have more than enough, is to have more than enough. You give to get, not the other way around. So when you are lacking something in your life, it’s best to give it away freely. This puts you back in balance and out of lack. Protecting what you have ensures loss. Giving what you have away freely ensures gain.
All of these rules are observations. I hope some of them have made you think. And I’m wondering what rules and observations you’ve made?
xx David